From: olsen@HING.LCS.MIT.EDU (James Olsen) Subject: 256-byte-sector SCSI disk support? Date: 15 Feb 1993 00:54:57 GMT
I'd like to use some cast-off (from TI Explorers) SCSI disks to run
Linux, but I find that they use 256-byte disk sectors. Unfortunately,
Linux refuses to use SCSI disks with sector sizes != 512 bytes.
I see three options here:
- junk the disks
- reformat the disks to 512-byte sectors
- hack in 256-byte sector support
Reformatting would not be trivial, due to lack of documentation.
(It might work, or it might really screw things up.)
I'd like to get opinions as to how hard it would be to hack in support
for 256-byte sectors. Looking over the sd.c code, I my guess is that it
might not be too hard to fake up some 512-byte sectors by intercepting
the requests, and multiplying or dividing by 2, as appropriate. Does
this seem realistic? Can I get away with changing only sd.c? Am I
missing an easier solution?
-- Jim Olsen olsen@cag.lcs.mit.edu